Monday, July 12, 2004

Apologists for Mass Murder

As if to pretend that conflict and persecution cannot possibly occur within the House of Islam, there are those hard at work trying to cast the spotlight being given the Darfur crisis as a matter of nefarious Western intentions, as Niraj reports. I'll quote him on the following, as it really needs stressing, amidst all the fuss raised by Arabs about Western and Israeli misdeeds, real and imagined.

No one has given this a religious dimension except to illustrate the fact that much of the Arab and Muslim press have ignored Darfur because it is Arabs who are doing the ethnic cleansing, not the United States or Israel. Such an admission would damage their credibility as victims of colonialism and imperialism. And let us not ignore the racial dimension of Darfur. Non-Arab Muslims, especially African Muslims, are often shabbily treated by their Arab brethren. The case is no different here.

No amount of Arab or Muslim hypocrisy would ever justify shameful behavior on our side, and the point here isn't to say "Who are these people to point at us?", but to push the Arab and larger Muslim world to adhere to the same standards of conduct within its boundaries that it demands of outsiders. What would truly be shameful would be to turn our eyes away from the way in which "brother" Muslims mistreat each other for fear of offending their sensibilities, as we would in effect be saying "Well, one can't really expect any better of such people, can one?"